Finding Your Customers on Twitter

Though face-to-face networking remains crucial to the success of your business, taking advantage on online tools can be a great supplement to all your other efforts to find prospects. Personally, I’m not always comfortable at networking events. Trolling for customers online is very comfortable and often leads to the identification of a prospect followed by a live meeting for coffee. Using Twitter to identify prospects, see how they behave online, and then engage with them, can be an incredibly efficient use of your networking time.

Twitter allows you to use keywords and hashtags to find prospects who may even be geographically targeted. Try Twitter’s Advanced Search tool to locate prospects. Using the Advanced Search tool along with the Twitter Operators enables you to find the people or businesses you are looking for in the location you are looking for.

Tweetdeck, Hoosuite and other applications that assist you in managing your Twitter feed, can also be used for prospecting purposes. Use keywords and phrases to add columns in both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite targeting people and/or business you want to connect with. When the columns populate, scroll through, locate those that interest you, and check them out. It’s easy to follow potential prospects and engage with them on Twitter. Who knows, maybe they’ll make the first move and want to connect with you.

Several other tools exist to assist in your prospecting. Twellow is an example of a tool that lets you target prospects by categories like you would use to look someone up in the Yellow Pages. Twellow also lets you add yourself to the directory for free.

Every tool has its pros and cons, and there are many to choose from. Find the one that works best for you and start engaging with your prospects. Let us know how it goes and what tools you are finding most useful.

Now You Can Tag Facebook Friends From Other Apps

Facebook on Tuesday added the ability for people to mention friends on the service via Open Graph apps.

“With this frequently requested feature, companies like Foursquare can implement user mentions that work like they do in posts on Facebook,” a Facebook representative said in a blog post announcing the addition.

“When people mention a friend in an Open Graph app, the story on Facebook links the person’s name to their timeline, and their friend will receive a notification. The story will also be added to the friend’s timeline or, if enabled, to timeline review. There are no privacy changes associated with this new feature.”

Different than Action Tagging (tagging someone you are physically with), Mention Tagging is designed to be used when someone wants to reference a person in a particular post. For instance, tag the friends in a photo or suggest that a friend check out a restaurant where you’re eating dinner.

Developers who want to implement mention tagging will have to provide users with a tokenizer or some other way that they can reference their friends. Developers are also not allowed to prefill messages. Everything in a message needs to be written by the user with the intention specifically of sharing that message on Facebook.

Developers will also need to resubmit their actions and requests approval to Facebook for user messages and tags.

What apps would you like to see use Mention Tagging? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Twitter changes provokes anger from developers

Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications.

Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission.

Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to double their user base before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow any further.

Critics said it would stifle the development of innovative products.

Revoked key

The changes came as part of Twitter's overhaul of its Application Programming Interface (API).

An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another.

In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Hootsuite, Twitpic and Tweetdeck - which was acquired by Twitter in May last year.

Twitter says the new rules, announced by its director of consumer product Michael Sippey, aim to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience".

Mr Sippey wrote: "If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens."

In this context, "tokens" are individual users.

The guidelines also covered how tweets are displayed within apps.

"If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key," Mr Sippey explained.

'Wiggleroom'

The changes are not expected to have an immediate impact on users.

However, the announcement was heavily criticised by developers.

Marco Arment, creator of popular reading service Instapaper, advised developers who were building on Twitter to "start working on another product".

"Twitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle room with the rules," he wrote in a blog post.

"Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time.

"Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with.

"I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore."

Twitter is not the only service to put such restrictions in place. Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging companies that made heavy use of its Maps product.

Top 14 Benefits of Social Media Marketing for You and Your Business

There's a lot of fuss surrounding social media these days. If you still haven't jumped on the bandwagon and aren't sure why so many people are making such a big deal about it, here are 14 benefits of social media for your business and you from Success magazine.

For Business:

Establish a brand and raise awareness. Since the majority of the population is already visiting social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, getting your brand name all over those networks can help let people know that you're around. If you have yet to create a company image online, social networks are the place to do it. Create a fun YouTube video that entertains and informs. Funny videos tend to make their way around the Internet a lot faster than any other kind, so when making a video, keep in mind that you want it to be interesting enough for your target audience to want to share. Using Facebook and Twitter to create a fun online community that your customers will want to visit will increase brand loyalty and drive traffic to your Website, allowing you the chance to make more online sales.

Spy on the competition. Follow your competitors on Twitter and Facebook and you’ll be able to see what they have up their sleeve. Just make sure to offer a better deal than whatever they have going on.

Pitch products in a more human, interactive way. Since people visit social media sites to get personal rather than be bombarded with ads, discuss your business in a fun way and engage your customers with questions. Ask their opinions and entice them to respond back. This way you’re making a valuable connection that will help increase your number of return customers.

Bring attention to your products. Featuring a product on a social media site is one of the fastest ways to bring attention to it. Offer a promotion along with it for your online community members and watch your sales skyrocket.

Increase customer loyalty and trust. Speaking to your customers in a personal way will make them feel like their talking to a friend, not a company. This will help increase their trust in you, which will make them do business with you rather than your competition. It will also increase the chances of customer recommendations.

Listen to your customer's opinion. Social media sites are an awesome way to see what your target audience is saying about your company or your products. Take their constructive criticism and use it to enhance your product to better meet their needs.

Conduct market research. Listen to what your customers say about your products and track what links they click on and you'll begin to see what your customers like and respond to. People love to express their opinions on social media sites, which will allow you to hear the truth. Then you can use your new-found information to tweak your product or service to please them as well as continue to post more information and links that they will enjoy.

Increase customer service. Social media networks allow your company to answer your customers' questions and concerns directly in a timely manner. This will improve customer satisfaction and also save you money on long distance customer service phone calls.

For You:

Build your personal reputation. Social networks allow you to get your name out to the world and talk about things that matter to you. This will help you build a good online reputation, which is critical nowadays if you're looking for a job or even a new business contact.

Display your resume. LinkedIn allows you to display your full resume online for any future employers or recruiters to see. This will help bring you new opportunities that never would have existed otherwise.

Find a job. Jobs are posted every minute on social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter along with the links or information you need to apply for them.

Showcase your talents and establish yourself as an expert. If you're passionate about a certain subject, whether it's work-related or a hobby, the Internet is a great place to show off your knowledge. Soon people will be coming to you for the breaking information on that topic, and talking about you to friends.

Increase your business contacts and enhance personal relationships. Through professional sites like LinkedIn, you can build your number of business contacts and enhance your reputation as an expert in your industry. You can also connect with those long-lost high school and college classmates, old colleagues, and out-of-town family members.

Share information with like-minded people. Connect with other professionals in your field to share information. Where else would you be able to connect with industry professionals across the globe to swap stories and advice?

Facebook Introduces Mobile Ad Unit to Promote Apps

Just a few weeks after introducing its first mobile ad unit, Facebook has launched another one, this time designed to help mobile app developers market themselves.

Facebook is testing the new unit with a “limited set of beta partners” Vijaye Raji, a software engineer at the company, wrote on Facebook’s blog on Tuesday. The units drive users to new apps. If a user clicks on an ad and they don’t have the app already, they’ll be directed to the App Store or Google Play to download it.

The unit is automated; to buy an ad you merely have to fill out an online form and delineate which demo you’re trying to reach and what your budget is. Once you buy a unit, you can use Facebook’s analytics tools to assess its performance.

As Raji notes, there is clearly an audience for such a unit: In the past 30 days, Facebook has sent customers to the Apple App Store and Google Play 146 million times.

The introduction comes after Facebook introduced Sponsored Stories for the News Feed in June. A few independent studies have deemed the ads more effective than traditional desktop ads. Despite such success, investors appear skeptical of Facebook’s odds of maintaining its revenues via mobile ads.

3 Game Changers in Online Marketing

Times are changing for web marketers, particularly those dealing with online retail marketing. Customers are getting harder and more expensive to attract and retain, and new technologies are emerging at breakneck speed.

There are a lot of tools that promise to help, but the better approach may be to focus on the following three areas that every marketer needs to address if they want to succeed online.

1. Speed

Many websites are still under performing when it comes to speed, and there’s a measurable financial cost associated to this. Every second added to a website’s load decreases conversions by a massive 2% to 7% and reduces page views by 1% to 2%. Just as importantly, Google makes no secret of the fact that speed is part of its ranking process, meaning that a slow loading site is going to suffer in search results.

A fast website is, therefore, the first thing you need to ensure if you’re going to win in the increasingly competitive online retail world. There are basic, technical things you can do. For example, ensure your site is technically optimized.Also, check out your hosting and bandwidth providers and make sure that you’re not unnecessarily forcing users to download massive videos or images.

Another route to faster site speeds that’s being adopted by major players in web retail is the tag management system. Website tags are used by third-party technologies to track and control activity on a page. Many sites can have twenty or even thirty different tags per page, and each one of these will slow down a page’s loading speed. A tag management system can manage this process, speed up your site, and improve performance.

That said, speed isn’t just about the rate at which your pages load. The best companies are constantly evaluating and rolling out new approaches. To succeed, your marketing team needs to be working with your technical team to ensure that you can move quickly and make the most of the technologies and approaches that exist.

2. Customer View

Online shopping behavior is becoming more complex. Three quarters of customers use more than two points of contact to make a purchase, whether that is multiple visits to a single site or using different online and offline access methods. As a result, 25% of sales cycles take more than a month to complete from consideration to purchase.

During these extended purchase processes, there are hundreds of different influences, offers, social messaging, and other touch points that can influence a consumer decision. A user might visit your website initially, but then they might friend your Facebook page, see a display ad, visit through a search link, or head into your physical store. Retailers need to stay on top of this journey throughout its life cycle. You need to know what led to a customer buying something from your site and, more importantly, what led to them not buying.

The answer is to take a customer-centric view of your analytics, rather than a web-centric view. Traditionally, analyzing website traffic has been all about tracking individual visits to your website, but instead you need to think more broadly about what customers are doing that leads into their on-site experience.

Amazon does a great job of this, using all the information they have on you to ensure that their recommendations are almost always spot on. Similarly, Apple does a great job of integrating the in-store and online experience. They’ve taken the pain away from in-store lines with their remote iPhone-style checkouts. Would you like them to email you your receipt? Of course! And in doing so, you’ve just handed them valuable information about your purchase that they can use on their website.

3. Personalization

Once you have a distinct understanding of your customer the next step is to see how you can personalize their experience. Personalization isn’t the same as recommendation. It’s not saying ‘you bought that so you might like this.’ It’s about building an online experience that’s truly personal and unique.

Imagine a store owner who knows you by your name, your size, your preferences, and hang ups. Imagine if you’re hesitating to buy a pricey shirt and they offer you quality reassurance or even a special offer if you’re about to walk away? What about if they can help you curate an outfit or even try it on? What if the store layout was adapted to your liking? What if you always walked into the Hugo Boss section? (Assuming that’s your cup of tea?).

This is personalization: The combination of bespoke design, layout, stock, and messaging. Some websites out there are starting to do this, but only a few so far. However, many websites still work on a site-wide change basis, changing everything for everyone. Research by Jim Manzi , has shown that only 10% of site-wide changes actually drive business change. True personalization relies on being able to serve the right content to the right segment at a specific time, nearly guaranteeing that your changes are going to drive results.

Of course, personalization isn’t a simple process, and it requires what could be the fourth game changer: automation. If you’re going to personalize for individual users effectively without killing your backstage team then you need to be able to customize on the fly based on the data you hold.